DPL election: low participation

This year I have not given any vote recommendation because all candidates would be (IMO) good DPL. The participation stats are a bit strange however: when I got the second call for vote I noticed 176 votes in the first week compared to 135 last year. So I thought “good, participation is on the rise”. But then I got reminded that we have shortened the voting period of the DPL election to two weeks. So the comparison doesn’t hold.

The vote close in two days and we have so far only 283 votes, and last year we got 482 in the end. So we’re likely to have much less participation this year… even if you add a percentage for the people who wish to vote but cannot for variousreasons (which proves once more how important it is that the next DPL be determined to fix those recurring problems), you won’t get the same numbers.

So my question is: do we have lower participation because all candidates are good and people do not care who gets elected? or do we have so many DD that follow Debian only every 2.5 weeks?

The DPL debate ended with the question “what differentiates you from the other candidates?”, followed by two minutes silence.

So if you agree with them, you don’t need to do anything because people still think voting below NOTA is reserved as punishment for people like krooger and should be avoided otherwise or you risk that the entire election needs to be repeated (which somehow is worse than electing someone they disagree with).

How about run for DPL yourself (or motivate someone else you like to run)? Might be a bit drastic, but saying that there’s nothing you can do yourself is not true.
It’s not like the current running peoples opinions have been total secrets in the past, and their platforms where AFAIK available before the timeslot to participate was over.

I think it’s pretty safe to draw the conclusion that they are all similar because we have without a doubt identified some of the worst and longest running problems in the project. Choosing to see other problems, just to be different would suck.